When Rai, an Italian citizen settled in Barcelona, began procedures to renew his passport, it was still seven months away from expiring. He has lived in Barcelona for over ten years and knows that the procedures at the Italian consulate in Barcelona are always slow. "I thought it was better to be cautious and do it with plenty of time, because I needed my passport for some business trips and I didn't want to take any risks," he explains. Despite this, he was unable to travel: the passport did not arrive in time. "Not only did I miss the trip, but last week I was forced to go to my home town in Italy, using my ID card, which has not expired, to renew my passport there". The slowness of the Italian consulate in Barcelona has cost him dear: €230 for the trip home, which he obviously paid out of his own pocket, and the trip he missed because his passport did not arrive on time. But he is far from being alone.

The day after Spain's Supreme Court ruled that the covid pass can be required to enter bars and restaurants, the Catalan Government has admitted that it is considering this restriction. The Secretary of Public Health, Carmen Cabezas, explained that the ruling "opens a door" that the Generalitat wants to "explore carefully". "We have the obligation to assess all options," Cabezas said.

The European Covid Certificate will come into force this Thursday to make travel within the European Union easier and safer. Although it will not be compulsory to have the document to travel within the Schengen area, having it will speed up travel: for example, exempting from quarantine and diagnostic tests on arrival in the country of destination. So far, Catalonia has issued more than one million certificates, most of them to certify the complete vaccination schedule.

The need to reactivate domestic and cross-border tourism throughout the European continent so that it becomes one of the economic engines of the post-pandemic recovery is leading both the United Kingdom and several European Union countries, such as France and Italy, among others, to finalise various formulae for covid passports to guarantee safe travel insofar as possible at least on the continent. This comes despite warnings of a possible third or fourth wave, depending on the regions, or the very serious situations that India or Brazil, for example, are still experiencing